An Overview of Indonesias Soil Sickness Essays -- Agriculture Agricul

An Overview of Indonesia's Soil Sickness The proper utilization of the world's soil to provide food for the world's increasing population is becoming an increasingly more important issue. In the tropical rain-forests, especially, the depletion of the natural ecological system has caused massive destruction to the rain-forests' soil, thereby impeding agricultural development. One of the stereotypes which is fostered by a concern for the proper use of the rain-forest habitat is that all slash and burn agriculture -- or swidden agriculture -- is detrimental to the rain-forest habitat, and should be halted completely. While swidden agriculture has caused large amounts of damage to the rain-forest as a whole, the problem lies not with swidden agriculture itself, but rather with the circumstances under which it is carried out. Tropical soils are able to survive, and indeed thrive, when swidden agriculture is executed properly. In Indonesia, examples of both correct and incorrect swidden agriculture methods can be found. The Indigenous peoples, who have been utilizing slash and burn methods of agriculture for centuries, properly burn and farm small plots of land, while letting soils regenerate plots which have recently been farmed. The peasant population of Indonesia, on the other hand, has turned to swidden agriculture by default, and utilizes the land only for short-term gain. The result is the depletion of the soil to an extent where it may never be utilized again. Two different methodologies of the same agriculture can have drastically different effects on the soil; why this is, and the specific processes involved in the soil which either deplete or enhance its quality will be examined in the following pages. In conclusion, ... ...k to colonize new, agriculturally marginal lands. Severe environmental disruption results..." (Goodland, 1984; 183). In order to save its soils, Indonesia needs major land reform policies, or social contracts which will give peasants an alternative to swidden agriculture. Until then, no amount of terracing, placing fertilizers in the soil, reducing slope, or irrigation can undo the damage to tropical soils. Unless something is done quickly, tree cover in the rain-forests may be replaced altogether by imperata savannah grass which threatens to turn Indonesia into a "green desert" (Geertz, 1964; 24). On a larger scale, failure to address the issue of soil depletion in Indonesia may result in the insufficiency of foodstuffs for the Indonesian people. As Edmund G. Brown, Jr. said, "Many past civilizations have fallen with their forests and eroded with their soils."